As a kid, I couldn’t wait to get out of Iowa. It represented missed opportunities, no chance to explore the world, a boring life, and a REALLY cold and miserable existence. Somehow, the years have changed my perspective. And my idea of what is important.We now cross the border into Iowa and find ourselves excited to be there. This state is where my family is and where we will be surrounded by love and memories for the few days we are there. Plus, I get uninterrupted time with this crew. The holidays can’t get much better than this.

Here are our pics from Thanksgiving in Iowa. Just warning you, I went camera happy!

As we complete our annual Thankful Tree leading up to Thanksgiving, I have to smile over what the kids are thankful for this year.

Forks, apples, coffee cake, movies, getting to drive 15 hours in the car so we can watch lots of movies, the whole universe, chairs, tables, ice skates…you know, the big stuff in life.

So far, my absolute favorite thing that was put on the tree though came from my middle daughter who said, “I’m thankful that God always knows what to do and that he is in control”. Yes, sweet girl, so am I.

It was our first year to trick or treat, and it was a blast! We’ve done the whole day time fall festival stuff, just never walked the streets for some reason. But this year, the kids are all old enough to push through bed time a bit, understand what goes on with trick or treating, and have fun so we hyped up trick or treating all week long and by Sunday, the kids could hardly contain themselves they were so excited. This year we have Super A, Super E, and an elephant. Pretty cute if I do say so myself =)By the third house, even Justus had the routine down. Knock on the door, open the bag, and say thank you. I think the kid ate 7 suckers while we were out. He was in heaven!The girls got to eat as much as they wanted while we were out on the streets; then when we got home, we put half of it back into our candy bowl and the girls handed it back out to neighbors. We went through all of the candy I bought plus all of their candy in about 35 minutes! I think they had just as much fun handing out candy to the neighbors as they did trick or treating. Such a fun time meeting new neighbors, creating new memories, and eating tons of chocolate. Now I’m off to bag up the remaining candy to take to Brent’s office. That chocolate keeps calling my name so it needs to leave this house!

Over the last few weeks, the girls have been adding what they are thankful for to their Thankful Tree. (Click here if you have no idea what I’m talking about) I thought I would share their list of things they are thankful for as we all celebrate Thanksgiving today. So in their own words, here are the things we have been thankful for over the past 2 weeks.